


In Their Minds; In Their Hearts

by Miyamashi (MorganEAshton)



Series: Alpha Kids: Unite [1]
Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Contemplation, Decapitation, Dirk Splinters, Dirk: Synchronize, Dirk: Unite, Friendship, Headcanon, Heart Powers, Hope Powers, M/M, Reference to Dirk's crush on Jake, Split Consciousness, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-09
Updated: 2012-09-09
Packaged: 2017-11-13 21:21:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/507836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorganEAshton/pseuds/Miyamashi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dirk Strider would do anything to save his friends.  He would die for them, he would shatter himself into pieces for them, and he would protect them from within their own minds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Their Minds; In Their Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> (Edit: Made a couple little changes, added a few bits.)
> 
> After a few watches of Dirk: Synchronize/Unite--once the initial excitement and shock at the events therein had faded--I found myself wondering how Dirk seemed to know everything he needed. It seemed odd, that he knew exactly what to do and how to do it and when. This fic is my idea of how.
> 
> This story is dedicated to venusian_eye, because without ["a thousand years"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/447686?view_full_work=true), I never would have had the little epiphany that led to this story. So, thank you for your beautiful writing. (To the rest of you, read that fic if you haven't. Seriously. It's awesome.)
> 
> Once I had the idea, this thing burrowed itself into my brain, and wouldn't let go until I wrote it. I find it perfect timing that my invite to this site came through just after I finished the first draft.
> 
> I hope you enjoy. <3

It came to him in flashes--in a dream as real as the rest of them--and what he didn't see, he heard.

The three of them spoke to him less in uttered words, than in a steady

tap

click

tapping,

the colors of their artificial voices tinting his peripheral vision, just outside the rims of his shades.

He couldn't do it when he was awake--not when his world was already both technicolor and violet, both endless ocean and a sea of spires--but he sometimes had these experiences when he got so bored and weary that he forced his waking self to be a little less awake. He vaguely registered the soft grip of Cal's arms around his neck like a real parent's as he relaxed and slipped into the calming presence of his friends.

They were nice dreams. 

The images were fuzzy, but their presence was warm. They told him eagerly of things he shouldn't be able to know, like where they were and what they were doing and how they felt about the little things. These were the things too banal to bring up online, the things that didn't slot neatly into normal conversation. It might have annoyed him were he awake, where he was constantly in motion, constantly on edge, constantly preparing. But here, where he could let down his guard, a part of him liked it, loved the casual irrelevance of it. 

He felt so welcome when they talked to him like that. Was this what a real visit felt like? Did you just hang out and talk about everything and nothing? It awoke an aching kind of longing in him that he didn't like to ponder. Being with them, however dimly and fleetingly, was such a foreign and wonderful kind of feeling that the pang when he awoke seemed more than worth it.

At times, when they allowed it, he could access their memories, laid out like a library for him to peruse. New Arrivals and the most significant moments--the Best-Sellers, if he wanted to continue the simile--stood out in proud display. Other, more private recollections were locked away in a restricted section that he couldn't access. He could never see the things they didn't want him to. They could block him. They could bid him leave their mental homes. They could shut that part of their minds off, almost just as he could do to AR.

Sometimes he saw like he was looking through their eyes. It was only ever snippets of sight, like frames from a camera, but it was vivid. Was he looking from inside their heads through the windows of their eyes, or was he just a part of them, getting glimpses of the world as they saw it? He wasn't quite sure. It grated on him, just barely, not being quite cognizant of how these powers worked.

Sometimes he could see them sleeping, and he allowed his dreamself to space out enough that he could keep the visions steadier and watch over them, more fondly and protectively than he would let on were they awake.

He didn't ever remember much of it, but what he did made him feel a little less alone--a little less useless, and a little less helpless to defend the people he loved most.

He wasn't sure exactly when he'd given those pieces of himself away, nor when he recognized consciously that he had. It hadn't been intentional, but the tangible pull he'd felt to them, and the ease at which he'd settled into their minds said they coveted him as tightly as he did them. It was as if they'd somehow known before he did that he could split his consciousness. It was as if he had always been there, held and cherished and brought to light and life in their minds, through their memories of him. Did they even realize it?

_Was this what happened when people touched your Heart?_

He wondered, sometimes, if they could ever see each other through him. Did they mistake it for those simple kinds of dreams people had when both their selves were alive, but sleeping? Whether they could communicate like that or not--and he hoped that they could--Dirk liked the way he felt as if he sort of tied them together across Space and Time.

At some times, he felt stretched a little thin. At all times, he refused to acknowledge it.

It wasn't his Earth's-self asleep this time, but his Derse's, and this was no casual visit. Now was the time to be the guardian to them he'd only previously fancied himself in dreams. He made sure AR was active and hooked into his thoughts, and let the images and sounds flow through him. He watched over their unconscious forms, and he combed their open memories, and he prodded them in their dream bubbles for anything they could tell him that would help. AR could process it faster than he could. AR could tell him how to proceed.

He busied himself setting up his own apartment to be sent into the Medium while his digital counterpart crunched the data. Quickly, red text flashed in his vision: "Squarewave, bucket, sendificator." He listened. It was a bit of a stretch to fit them into a rap and get them in his sylladex ("Sendificator" became "red box", but it would have to do). He silently cursed his fetch modus. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. 

AR had definitely been a good idea, though, as had his two rapbots.

Dirk wasn't sure that he believed in fate--he didn't care for the idea of having no actual control--but this sure as fuck felt like it. He had a splinter in each of his friends to tell him where to go and how to get there. He had two robots for two houses. He had Roxy's memories to tell him that the fenestrated plane in his living room conveniently connected to her place. He had AR's advanced computing powers to keep the plan straight. It seemed too perfect to be mere coincidence. 

He gave himself some credit, however, for having ensured that he was well-prepared. If nothing else, it meant he was fated to be the one to do this. Were it Jake who had been destined for heroics, he probably would have eaten it up. It was just like one of his movies. The thought gave Dirk the slightest twinge of fond amusement, before he pushed it aside and refocused on the task at hand.

He let Sawtooth take over for him as he left his home and rode through he voided space between his own and Roxy's. The troll Jake had tried to clobber gave him a high five on the way. It was surprisingly vindicating. He hadn't even realized he was worried, that he needed that kind of encouragement.

He could do this. He'd prepared his whole life for moments like this.

Dirk knew Roxy was dead. He had felt her waking self blink out, had seen the tendril of the Red Miles in the moment before, as if it were coming through his own abdomen. He still was no more prepared to see her than he had been to watch Jane die. There was a lot of blood. She was pale and still.

Human contact was still a foreign feeling, and he hadn't even yet touched a living person. Just a dead troll, and now the cold, wet body and frigid lips of one of his only friends. 

He knew it had worked when Derse flashed in his view. He saw Jane's corpse before him, and his own unconscious form nearby, hand still outstretched towards her.

He knew before AR said it, what he would have to do. His dreamself had to wake, and there was only one way to ensure that would happen. He understood, with a numb kind of dread, why he had his sendificator. 

His eyes flicked to Roxy. If it were actually true that nobody could escape the Miles, then it was better to control his own death with a chance for revival, than to die here without a hope.

His only Hope.

He would have to trust that Jake would revive him. He would have to trust that Jake wouldn't be too freaked out, nor too repulsed by him. He would have to trust that Jake really did want to be the hero.

It wasn't how he'd imagined kissing Jake at all.

He decided to do it quickly. Any hesitation could have been enough time to lose his nerve. 

His breath caught as his mind seemed to dial the levels of everything else down, funneling his focus in on the sight of the box closing in on him. The thought came to his mind unbidden that his shades darkened the bright Crocker red into something even more morbid. He became acutely aware of the things going on in his own body that he usually ignored. The constricted feeling in his chest and the way his mouth suddenly felt full of sand had nothing to do with the close quarters around his head, but it was nonetheless easier on his pride to blame claustrophobia he'd never had than to admit he was afraid of death.

He tapped the button. 

The millisecond of white-hot pain seemed to last an eternity. His mind slowed enough to register the loss of all sensation below his neck as his spine was severed. The scream that tried to leave his lips was cut off halfway, and left only an undignified little squeak, and a bit of blood that bubbled up and spilled out of the corner of his mouth. He couldn't move, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't _anything_.

He'd always said he would die for them.

He was dying for them,

and then he was

Nothing.

 

But death didn't work like that. You didn't just stop. You didn't just disappear, and yet part of him, even knowing what he did about the mechanics of the game, had feared and even expected as much.

_What if it's different for a Heart player? What if there isn't enough left of me for a ghost? What if, by dying, I destroy a part of my soul completely?_

It was so easy to believe it, with that jarring change from the shine of the sendificator and the burning agony it brought, to the cool, calm void.

It took him a moment to realize that his mind was still active, and his eyes were just closed. 

The dream bubble was small. There was no fantasy landscape around him. There were no friends nor dead trolls to greet him. It was just himself, floating in the center like a fish in a bowl. Every dream bubble has a purpose, UU had told him once. What was the point of an empty one? Did he really have no memories important enough to relive?

Then he saw them: Three of him in a neat little row, like a split reflection on the inside of the shiny surface.

The one on the right was too handsome, lips fuller than his own. Shades off, sharp unfamiliar bedroom eyes of indeterminable color framed by long black lashes. Toned muscles through a too-tight shirt, and a too-noticeable bulge in his black jeans. He looked like a character from a trashy romance novel, or worse, like the bishiest bishie to ever live. It should have been flattering, but it was so unfamiliar that it just seemed odd. Embarrassment wasn't something Dirk felt often, but this had the barest bit of heat jumping to his cheeks. That had to be a feat.

The one on the left seemed older, bigger, a bit imposing even to the true him. Power radiated from him in waves, everything sharp lines and proud posture. He was the kind of dude you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley. That should have stroked another part of his ego, Dirk mused. He'd agonized more than once that he wanted to look more like the badass he really was. This guy definitely fit the bill, but something rang false. Something was missing that he couldn't quite place.

In the middle was just him, so close as to almost perfectly match the real thing. Never had Dirk been so relieved to see his gangly limbs nor his spattering of awkward freckles.

All three reflections seemed both asleep and awake, alert and inert at once. Alive and dead. 

Schroedinger's Striders.

They showed both his success and failure. The abyss wasn't telling him how it would turn out. A knot tightened unbidden in the pit of his imaginary gut.

It struck him suddenly that he couldn't connect with his friends. He couldn't connect with his unconscious Dersian form. Even AR seemed to be non-functional here. It seemed so strange, suddenly, to be seeing the world like others did. Everything was so much _clearer_. He pushed up his shades--useless as they were out here with no connection and with nobody to hide from except himself--and let his uncluttered senses adjust. The darkness outside the dream bubble was writhing, whispering in a muffled tongue he couldn't parse. In the distance--how far, it was impossible to tell--other spheres like pastel glass hung as if from invisible threads. 

He wasn't sure if he liked this better or not. Splitting himself into pieces--now literally and figuratively--wasn't a problem. That was just his life, and he had resigned himself to it years prior. The near-silence, however, was a bit overwhelming, he begrudgingly admitted. He really was the master of irony, wasn't he? 

He promptly put his shades back down. The Horrorterrors blended back in with the Void around them. Colors muted. His eyelids relaxed. 

He hadn't even noticed he'd been squinting.

What was he supposed to do, just float in here and twiddle his thumbs while he waited for Jake to revive him? How long would he have to wait? Would it ever happen? Just the thought of that set his nerves at edge. Inactivity always made him stir-crazy. 

The claustrophobia before had been imaginary. This definitely was not.

He looked around him in every direction for something useful, his body--real or no--still carefully controlled soas not to reveal the vague twinges of desperation trying to rear their ugly heads. Still, the only things around him were the flat projections of those other selves, which seemed to follow him no matter which way he turned. In the round, empty space, it left him without a point of reference. He focused to see the other dream bubbles in the distance again to try and get an idea of which way he was facing. He guessed he was probably floating upside down. Was that even a Thing out here?

Why were those three even there? What was the fucking point? He already knew he was a bit of a narcissist. If this was the universe's way of reminding and punishing him, it was pretty shitty, and it was starting to piss him off. He had things to do and friends to rescue. Irons in the fire, and all that.

He hadn't felt this trapped and lonely since he'd been a kid. Feeling like a fucking _child_ was not what he needed right now.

_Think, Dirk. Why are they here?_

He remembered a dream conversation he'd had with Jake not long ago. It was strange, because he didn't actually think he'd been aware of it at the time. How was he remembering now? It was a bit disconcerting to acknowledge that his other selves just kept living their own lives without his conscious input.

(It suddenly seemed unfair that they got to see his friends without him, while he was trapped in the middle of the goddamned ocean. 

No. It was not the time for self-pity.)

He had to be remembering that conversation for a reason. He just had to find it. What had Jake told him that was so important? He ran over his best bro's words as thoroughly as he could remember them, but nothing stood out. Jake had mostly listened, and even spots where he took the reigns in the conversation didn't seem to yield any information of particular use.  
Perhaps he was going about this the wrong way. What had _he_ said to _Jake_? This was the conversation where he'd revealed to Jake that a piece of his soul was locked inside him. Was that it? What had he said?

Ask, and ye shall receive. Pay attention, and you'll find what you need. It was a rule Dirk lived by, and it had served him well in the past, when he'd looked for answers through the vast database of history and the writings of the great philosophers.

It came to him abruptly and clearly, a telling sensation of weight behind the words: "I don't think one of Dirk's splinters could exist nearly as well in anyone else's mind other than yours." 

There it was. That was the piece he needed. He slotted it into his mental code. The programming was complete, and the gears in his head whirred to life.

The visions had always been clearer with Jake, the sounds closer to an actual voice. Jake was in HD. Jake was in 3D, like Dirk could reach out and actually touch him. Jake felt more like an actual presence, whereas Roxy and Jane felt more like conversations in role-playing games. They seemed more scripted, more stilted. There were more frame-skips and artifacts with them, more static.

He'd always assumed it was because of the extra attention he'd paid to Jake, to the way he held onto and endlessly analyzed every green word. Infatuation did that, didn't it? It made you notice every detail, every habit, every nuance that made a person unique and special.

Perhaps it had been stupid to assume. He looked again at his reflections, and understood. It wasn't how he saw his friends that determined the strength of his splinters. It was how clearly they saw him, how accurately their mental blueprints allowed them to build him into their psyches.

Roxy loved everyone, if a bit hormonally. She'd flirted with him enough times for him to realize she was only half-joking, and with all that alcohol in her system, it made sense that she saw him through beer goggles. Dirk suddenly wondered what Jane and Jake would look like to her, if they could splinter like he could. He doubted he was the only one she saw with such a bias. They'd probably look just as stereotypically beautiful. 

The bishounen's constantly-shifting eye color made more sense now, too. Roxy had never seen him without his shades, had she? It was apparent that she wanted to. Maybe he'd show her, if they all made it out of this alive.

Jane, bless her, was so sweet, but so insecure. She saw everyone more highly than she saw herself, even when they were the ones at fault. Was she scared of him? Had he made himself more intimidating to her than he'd meant to? Perhaps he took the ironic bamf thing too far sometimes. He didn't need--didn't want--Jane to feel so small around him. She needed more confidence. He'd coddled her, though, hadn't he? He'd always ensured her protection, like he thought she was helpless. Perhaps soon he would teach her to defend herself, instead.

Jake knew him. Jake saw him as he was. Even if a lot of it could be attributed to the Hope thing, it didn't stop the rush of affection Dirk felt at that moment. It was the thing he loved most about the boy, wasn't it? It was why _everyone_ loved him. Jake saw everything so simply and truthfully, so undiluted and pure. Obtuse as Jake could be, when he opened his eyes it was like he could see right through any masks. Dirk had a lot of masks, and Jake broke them down, stripped them away, saw through him without ever trying, and possibly without ever realizing he did it. Dirk had always felt like himself around Jake. Now he could see, with perfect clarity, why. 

They were the keys back to his friends. Without them, how long would he be trapped in this timeless space?

 _Timeless_.

He was not a Time player, but something in him knew, in a way he couldn't explain, that he would need Time on his side.

The Void existed outside of Time. The splinters were both asleep and awake, alive and dead.

 _Every dream bubble has a purpose_.

He didn't think it through like he did most things. He just propelled himself forward, as if pushed by an unseen force, toward the true reflection directly in front of him. 

He could almost feel himself dissolving, stretching, as he phased through the wall of the bubble. It wasn't an altogether unpleasant sensation. It was freeing, in a way, to let that piece truly die, knowing it wouldn't truly disappear, only be integrated into the three before him. One less splinter to worry about.

He connected, first to Jake, then almost at once to Roxy and Jane. For the most fleeting of moments and for an eternity, he was there, in their pasts, presents, and futures. He had both no form and three forms; both the freedom of lacking a body, and the limitations of multiple incomplete and biased ones. All of him continued to stretch and blur together, until it was like he had become the perfect, divine sphere of the dream bubble, with no beginning and no end. 

He awoke on Derse. 

He had spent so much of his life controlling two bodies at once, but this was unlike any prior experience. He existed at all moments in a finite space of time. He didn't act or become, but he _was_ all points in the stable loop. He could see and feel all three of the people who mattered. 

He was waking Jake, and Jake was waking him. He was pulling Roxy away from Derse before the Miles could get her a second time. He was intercepting Jane between transportalizers. He knew where he needed to go because he was already there. 

He could save them. He was saving them. He had saved them.

As he stood before Jake--Jane and Roxy safe behind him--he watched through four sets of eyes as Jake kissed him. As Jake's lips touched his cold ones and the loop completed, his borrowed Time and the feeling of enlightenment that had accompanied it flowed out of him like a sigh. Things slowed until the seconds were ticking by normally again. One by one, his selves in his friends slipped into dormant sleep, and the split-screen of his mind reduced to one view. Instead of the quiet's barelling him over as it had before, it left him feeling at peace and _normal_.

He didn't care that his own decapitated head had been discarded carelessly in Jake's surprise. That piece of him was gone, dead, irrelevant. All that mattered was that he'd done it. He was with real people, and those people were his friends. He could speak to them, he could touch them. They were real and alive and _there_. For the first time in his life, Dirk found use for something he'd never needed.

He met Jake's gaze through his shades, 

and in a silent thanks

he smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> A few fun facts: This fic has at least one reference to each of the God Teir Aspects. Some are in-your-face obvious, while others are pretty vague.
> 
> I namedropped the song title from [s]Prince of Heart: Rise Up. I didn't realize I'd done it until the edit after.
> 
> There are a couple tiny nods to Plato's Timaeus. Here are the sections that I referenced:
> 
> "Such was the whole plan of the eternal God about the god that was  
> to be, to whom for this reason he gave a body, smooth and even, having  
> a surface in every direction equidistant from the centre, a body entire  
> and perfect, and formed out of perfect bodies. And in the centre he  
> put the soul, which he diffused throughout the body, making it also  
> to be the exterior environment of it; and he made the universe a circle  
> moving in a circle, one and solitary, yet by reason of its excellence  
> able to converse with itself, and needing no other friendship or acquaintance."  
> (plus the section directly before it)
> 
> and
> 
> "First then, in my judgment, we must make a distinction and ask, What  
> is that which always is and has no becoming; and what is that which  
> is always becoming and never is?"  
> (plus the section directly following it)
> 
> They're imperfect references, but there you are. 
> 
> None of that stuff was really planned. It just kind of happened, as is how things usually go with me.
> 
> Thank you for reading. I really hope you enjoyed. <3 and digital hugs.


End file.
